The smell of happiness. The smell of goodbyes.
This story begins in a cafe. Like any good story.
They invite me.
The actual words are: you must go to this place, it is beautiful. And it is. It has a visuality that bohemian artists like me tend to love. It is in Vedado. At 23 and someting.
I'm terrible at directions. But it's worth getting a little lost to get here.
We come to celebrate the graduation of the Onelio Center. We come to say goodbye in a certain way. Tomorrow we will return to our provinces but we take with us the friendship created in these days. The pact created through our letters. We have the desire to continue writing. As strange as that may seem these days. For some reason I carry a book by the Cuban writer Pedro Juan Gutiérrez. A book titled: Dog Meat.
The weird way my mind works tries to combine the dirty realism of Pedro Juan with the most beautiful mocachino I've ever seen.
I wonder: How to combine coffee, milk and chocolate chips with the first sentence of the book? The one that says "You like shore women. That's dog meat."
And suddenly it happens.
Like those connections that make you scream eureka!
She liked this type of coffee. She who was my dirty realism. The reason I wrote and still write and will write.
I want to call her. Tell her that I am in a beautiful place, having a coffee that reminds me of her.
But I don't do it.
One of my classmates sits next to me. I invite her to order something and order a chocolate coffee. Another one of those coffees that she would like. We talk about his story and half jokingly, half seriously I ask him for a phrase that struck me during the reading: "It's me. It just stopped happening to you."
She gives me the phrase and I start writing a text message.
A message I didn't send.
A message I will regret sending.
My companions laugh and talk in a cafe that invites many photos to be taken. A coffee in Vedado. A place we have reached because we write. Because we are very screwed inside and we write well.
My companions laugh and drink coffee with varying degrees of exoticism.
But I have been left behind. Thinking about dirty realism. That I should continue writing just for her. And what am I? Just stop it happening to you.